Centre for Justice, Law and Society (CJLS)
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Centre for Justice, Law and Society (CJLS)
Who we are
CJLS's main objective is to support and develop scholarly activity, research, and research-led teaching in the School. It focuses on the study of law, institutions, and governance in the context of current societal issues and challenges. It adopts a critical, multidisciplinary perspective and a local, regional, and global focus.
CJLS aims to be an inclusive forum that brings together scholars from across the institution, who are at different stages of their careers, to develop individual and collaborative projects. CJLS provides support for the development of PhD, early and mid-career researchers and aims at fostering external links.
Our Objectives
- Contribute to the research environment.
CJLS provides a forum for the exchange of ideas and the development of individual and collaborative projects by organising and hosting seminars and conferences, fostering internal and external links, and providing a peer-support group for the production of publications and the submission of funding applications, for both early and mid-career researchers. CJLS also intends to explore the possibility of establishing partnerships with other research centres and institutes. - Support the production of publications and funding applications, with a peer-support group.
Members of the Centre also contribute to a programme aimed at skill development for ECRs at the School level. - Support research-led teaching.
CJLS provides supervisory and monitoring capacity for the PhD programme in law and criminology. Expertise in CJLS also feeds the LLM programme. Members of CJLS provide skill development sessions for Early Career Researchers and postgraduate research students, as well as organising ad hoc presentations by practitioners on career paths. CJLS aims to strengthen its links with the Legal Advice Centre in the School.
CJLS welcomes initiatives by postgraduate research students, and all its research seminars, conferences and workshops are open to all students.
Centre Director
Dr Annalisa Meloni is a senior lecturer in law at the University of East London with over 12 years of experience in research and teaching both within and outside academia. Her main area of research is EU visa policy and, more broadly, EU external border controls and immigration law. Key themes in her research include the intersection of human rights, security, and technology in the field of border control and how European integration impacts human rights and security. She holds a PhD (funded by the AHRC) and an LLM from University College London.
Qudsia Mirza, Co-Director
Qudsia Mirza is a Senior Lecturer in Law and qualified as a solicitor before entering academic life. She has extensive teaching and research experience both in the UK and in the US. She has held teaching positions at Birkbeck, University of London, and in the US, at Albany Law School, New York, where she was the Kate Stoneman Professor of Law and Democracy, and at the University of Cincinnati, where she was Visiting Professor of Law.
Qudsia has held a number of research positions which include the Francis Lewis Scholar in Residence at Washington and Lee University, Visiting Scholar at the Department of Gender and Women's Studies, University of California Berkeley, Visiting fellow in the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School, and Visiting Fellow at Onati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Spain.
Qudsia has been appointed to executive and advisory positions for several organisations which range from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants in the UK, to the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Institute, University of North Texas in the US. She currently sits on the Policy Council, and the Executive Committee of Liberty, the UK's leading human rights organisation.
She has been a member of the governance committee of the International Law and Society Association and is currently a Trustee on the Board of Trustees. She has held editorial board positions at Social and Legal Studies and the Muslim World Journal of Human Rights. She is currently a member of the International Editorial Board, International Journal of Law in Context and a member of the Editorial Board, Legal Transformation in Muslim Societies.
Qudsia's research and publications are in the area of Islamic Law. Her focus is on two main areas: feminist/reformist perspectives of Islamic Law; and the development of Islamic legal cultures by diasporic Muslim communities and their relationship with official legal systems.
